My disgust of the political process in the US the last few years have been how both parties far left or far right have dominated their respected parties. Or, maybe dominate is not the right word. It's that the established candidate seems to always get the nod. My views are mostly in the center. I think most of the country is in the center on their views. They're disgusted with the political games. I'm thrilled to see, this year, the hard right talk show guys upset about John McCain. Many of my beliefs are conservative but these guys take it way overboard. To me, John McCain votes his conscience and doesn't care the price it may cost in his party. Glad to see he'll get the nomination. On the Democrat side, it's interesting to see Hilary Clinton sweating it out and Barack Obama taking the lead. What will happen if it's decided by Super Delegates and they vote for Clinton even if Obama wins the popular vote? Great irony seeing how the Democrats cried foul for so long about the electoral college that cost them the Presidency. If we do get McCain and Obama on election day, I think we finally have two candidates that we can at least agree have some integrity in their beliefs. In McCain's case, he's an American hero who suffered greatly in defense of this country during his years in a Vietnam prison camp. His record proves he votes with his conscience and has his country as his first priority. Obama has risen from no where to capture the spirit of America. I like his positive message and a President should first capture our imagination. It's what people loved about Ronald Reagan. The abilility to inspire.
So, it's been interesting so far in a good way.

I really did not want to miss John Head's Jumpstart session on desktop integration with MS office. It's been one of those sessions that's evaded me the past couple of years and I vowed not this year. I mean, I've done some Word and Excel automation. Nothing too complex. This year, I was right in the middle of a Word automation project and it was a perfect time for this session. You know that feeling you get when you hear a small gem that makes your life so much easier. Funny thing is that I knew this technique at some point but it was in a part of my memory that must be where the dead brain cells hang out. John discussed a bunch of cool integration stuff but the simple idea of turning on the macro recorder and grabbing the VB code was exactly what I needed for this project. Also, Tom Duff has a Notes database out on OpenNtf that contains the MS Contstants and their number equivelant. Get it here. (It took me a while to find) You see, MS Word gives you contants like WDToggle and Notes has no idea what that means. You simply replace the constant with the number from Tom's database. Using this method, one of the things I was able to do was create dynamic tables with the proper format. The great thing about this Office automation stuff is that it amazes your users and it's not that hard to do. Especially, with these two shortcuts, you can be the wizard.
Enjoy.

I was heading over to OpenNtf for a different reason today and noticed the 'Project of the Month'. Lotusphere, for me, was full of 'little' surprises. Ext.ND was one of the bigger surprises. Why had I not read about this before? It's so cool !
From the OpenNtf home page:

ExtND--Simple yet elegant web 2.0 functionality for Domino.
Ext for Notes and Domino--aims to Provide a better “out of the box” Web UI/UX for IBM Lotus Domino applications by developing a framework that will extend Domino, based on EXT.
This tool is easy to use, well structured, well documented, and will yield a highly finished product in a matter of days, not weeks .

Head on over to OpenNtf for a demo.

Hats off to the project chefs: Rich Waters, Jack Ratcliff, Nathan Freeman

In one of Rocky Oliver's Lotusphere sessions, he went over some cool functions in formula and LotusScript. I support an application that's been around a while. It has an administrative page with lots of names in a multi-value field. You don't always remember during the heat of battle about new functions as they come along. During Rocky's session, it hit me that we could use @Sort in the translation formula. Lotusphere was full of those small revelations. This week, while working with arrays in LotusScript, I used the ArrayUnique function(new in R6). As the title implies, it magically removes duplicates from your array. I'd not used it before that I can recall and I was pleased when I found it in Help. Works great and saves you time. I love the small pleasures in life. :)

From time to time, I check out what's coming in music on Amazon.com. The well has been dry lately. I'm a huge Van Morrison fan and I was excited today to see a new disc on the way, 'Keep it Simple'. I like this quote from the notes, What it does feature are gorgeous songs rich with emotion, depth and beauty. Sounds like what we've come to expect from Van. Woot!

Check it out on Amazon.

Labels: Lotus Notes

I'm no photographer but I did take some pictures at Lotusphere. I maxed out my memory card just after Alton Brown and the Blogger annual on stage picture.

Enjoy the fun here.

Labels: Lotus Notes

Talk to me when you grow up to 80gb. But, I do appreciate the effort. I'm not ready to dish out $500 for not enough memory for my collection. Keep growing iPod.

Labels: Lotus Notes

We hoped for a good Super Bowl game and we got it. I didn't think the Giants could do it. My 12 year old son has just started watching football with me this year. We're Dallas Cowboy fans. Being from CT, we don't have a team in our state. We live half way between Boston and NY. Many people in my area support teams from far away cities. For me, I loved the Roger Staubach Cowboy teams and Troy Aikman's teams. I've come to really enjoy Tony Romo's rise to fame. I was having trouble deciding who to root for in the Super Bowl. In one way, I wanted to see perfection completed for the Patriots. I've cheered for them in the past Super Bowls because I liked their emphasis on 'team'. My son was supporting the Giants from the beginning of the game. He got my attention and then the Giants defense really got my support. I really liked the way they were dominating the game. I really love good defense. The defense just does not get the respect they deserve. Defense wins championships. I really got on the Giants band wagon after the Patriots scored the go ahead touchdown. I didn't like the celebration and taunting displayed by Randy Moss. Being a Cowboy fan, it was cool to see the NFC East style of play once again prove to be superior to the passing style of the AFC. Grind it out on the ground. Smash mouth Defense. I'm not sure how you can award a most valuable player with such a great team win. Ely did ok but he also had some luck. He missed an easy
3rd down conversion before the Patriots went down and scored the go ahead TD. He over threw the receiver. He also almost threw an interception on the final drive. The Pats let that one get away. He was throwing off his back foot and a little off balance into coverage. He should donate the Escalade to the team. The defense was the story and they won this game. What an unbelievable and awesome performance. I'd like to see it again knowing the outcome. Hats off to the Giants! Savor the moment.

Labels: Lotus Notes